Agent in Place by Helen MacInnes

You’d never have time for any of that old-boys-together talk.”
    “Better order the drinks,” Tom reminded himself, moving quickly to the telephone.
    “How did your day go?”
    “Not too bad.” Tom waited for bar-service to answer, speculating again why Lawton had been so eager to arrange a meeting here this evening with Gillon, rather than going straight to Gillon himself. Tony’s wiles always amused Tom: they gave him good copy too, although they weren’t always immediately publishable. “Not too bad at all. I was well briefed. I’ll know where to start digging for information in Paris, get the French points-of-view about the Brussels meeting next month. They’ve got a kind of—” He broke off to tell bar-service that he needed Scotch, bourbon, spring water, soda and plenty of ice. Pronto.
    “A kind of what?” Dorothea asked as he left the ’phone.
    “We-are-with-you-but-not-of-you complex. Tricky to evaluate. It could mean more than we think, or less than we hope.” The French, dissociated since de Gaulle from NATO’s military problems, would attend only the diplomatic and economic sessions of the Brussels meeting, but they still held definite opinions about European defence.
    “So,” she said slowly, “you’ll be covering the NATO meeting on December twelfth.” She was still hoping that he wouldn’t have to return so soon to Europe. With this Paris visit, he would miss Thanksgiving at home. He might miss Christmas with his trip to Brussels. “It’s all definite?”
    “Definite,” he said, and hoped there would be no more argument about that. “I’ll be back before Christmas. All the NATO meetings will be over well before then.”
    But, she wondered, will your business be over, my sweet? Emergencies could stretch an assignment, as she well knew. She ought to be grateful, she reflected, that Tom wasn’t staying on for extra weeks in Paris while he waited for the Brussels meetings to begin—a lot of men would have done just that.
    “You look like a girl who needs help with a zipper,” said Tom, and fixed her dress. “Perfect,” he decided, swinging her round to look at the total effect, and it was no diplomatic lie. He kissed her gently.
    “So are you. I like that dark red tie.”
    “Matches my eyes,” he told her, and let her go, to hurry into the sitting-room as a waiter arrived with the tray of drinks. He heard her laugh. But his eyes were tired, he had to admit. As well as listening today, there had been a lot of reading and note-taking; and a head now filled with a collection of odd facts that kept swimming around. All he wanted was a relaxed evening, a pleasant dinner, and early to bed with his beautiful blonde. “Any message from Chuck?” he called to her.
    “Not so far.” Dorothea was selecting the right earrings. Tom’s voice had sharpened. She could imagine the frown on his face. “Chuck will be here. Even if he didn’t get my message, he’ll turn up.”
    And there came the old twinge of guilt, whenever she mentioned Chuck: her fault, probably, that he had drifted away from Tom in these last five years. Before her day, they had enjoyed a fairly comfortable set-up from Chuck’s point of view. Until she had entered the scene. Then, he had left Washington behind him for a job at Shandon House and a life of his own in New York.
    About time, too, she had believed: Chuck, except for college and army service, had been on Tom’s back since he was eight and Tom eighteen. At that ripe age, Tom had become father and mother combined, and found a cub-reporter’s job to pay the bills (their parents’ life insurance could scarcely meet the rent of the New York apartment). As soon as Chuck was safely into college, Tom seized the chance to be a war correspondent in Korea. With that over, he was back at the dutiful-brother bit, seeing Chuck through a youthful and disastrous marriage, remaining a bachelor himself—partly because he was into international politics and the new